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An Awful Calamity (Gold Hill Fire)

Crime of 1873

This article is from the book, Silver Fever. Find more silver related books atShopNumismaser.

Fire! Fire in the Gold Hill mines! was likely the
cry that rang out through the Comstock mining
towns of Gold Hill and Virginia City during
the morning of Wednesday, April 7, 1869. In the
next few harrowing hours, as rescuers desperately
fought dense smoke and overpowering gases, the
full scope of the “greatest mining calamity that has
ever occurred on the Pacific Coast or in any mines
in the United States” became clear. Devoured
were the Yellow Jacket, Crown Point and Kentuck
mines. Trapped below were first-shift miners from
all three mines. Desperately clinging to hope
aboveground were distraught wives and weeping
children gathered at the mine shafts to begin an
agonizingly long vigil.

Never before had the Comstock witnessed such
a calamity. In the decade since Henry T. P. Comstock
and others had clambered up the sides of
Mount Davidson in search of gold, a number of
miners had lost their lives working on the Comstock
through accidents common to all mines, but
nothing up to this date could compare. The events
of that Wednesday morning overshadowed all,
bringing a pall over a community that in the past
decade had become as accustomed as humanly
possible to the costly toll mining exacted on its
husbands, fathers, sons and uncles.

“By far the most terrible calamity that has ever
occurred in our mines will be found recorded in
our local columns of this morning,” the April 8,
1869, edition of the Virginia City Territorial
Enterprise began its terrifying coverage of the fire.
“It is appalling almost beyond description, and the
communities of Virginia and Gold Hill are
shrouded in gloom at the ghastly occurrence. This
time the story is not of a singular man precipitated
down a shaft, or crushed by a falling mass of earth.
It is a whole chapter of fire and suffocation—of
mangled and blackened bodies—of two score of
strong men desperately struggling for life, and
finally perishing by fire, smoke and poisonous
gases, hundreds of feet under ground.”

Though, by some reports, the fire may have
been smoldering for several hours, it was not discovered
until 7 a.m., by which time most of the
first shift of all three mines had descended to their
workstations, nearly 1,000 feet down. Within a few
anxious moments of the first encounter with the
fire, at the 800-foot level of the Yellow Jacket, the
three mines—interconnected by drifts and chambers—
were consumed by choking fumes, overcoming
almost all in its path.

“A rush was made for the cages, and the hoisting
signal given,” the Territorial Enterprise reported.
“But few could be raised at one time, and therefore
but few escaped to the surface with their lives.”3
At the Crown Point, a terrified miner pleaded to be
allowed to board an already dangerously overloaded
cage. “One man unable to find room to
stand upright, crawled upon the cage, and thrusting
his head between our informant’s legs, begged
to be allowed to remain there and go up,” the Territorial
Enterprise wrote. “He was allowed to
remain and his life was saved.”4 As the cage
ascended, those left behind were heard to throw
themselves into the shaft while others slumped to
the floor unconscious. Another miner told the Territorial
Enterprise that as he rushed for a cage, it
occurred to him that he might fall into the shaft. So
he got down on his hands and knees to feel his
way, but while crawling along, three or four others
ran past and “pitched headlong into the shaft.”

Disasters usually bring out the best in men, and
the fire at the Gold Hill mines was no exception.
At one cage lowering, a rescuer, realizing that one
of the miners he encountered below was ready to
collapse, risked his life by giving up his place on
the cage. Fate was on this hero’s side. The courageous
miner rode safely to the surface on a subsequent
cage lowering.

John James, second shift foreman at the Crown
Point, was another of the fire’s list of notables.
James took a cage down to the 600-foot level,
where he begged 10 men he found there to climb
on board with him. Only one did. There being little
smoke in the drift at that time, the others regrettably
chose to try an escape through the Kentuck,
“but upon breaking down a partition which stood
in their way, were met by the smoke, which rushed
in upon them.”6 None survived.

Others later credited by the Territorial Enterprise
with acts of heroism in battling the fire
included Charley Merrow, who led the search for
survivors; James Rosvere, “who almost equally
risked his life;” James Reynolds; Riff Williams;
Thomas Quirk; Jack Doble; Nick Andrews; William
Gibson, chief of the Gold Hill Fire Department;
William Lee; W.C. Joice; Frank Kellog;
John Leonard; A.A. Stoddard; and John Percival
Jones, superintendent of the Crown Point mine.

Upon arriving at the mine from Virginia City,
Yellow Jacket superintendent John D. Winters
sounded an alarm bringing fire companies from
Gold Hill and Virginia City to the scene. However,
the rescuers were hampered by the raising and lowering
of the cages, which created a draft and helped
fill the mines with smoke. It soon became too dangerous
to send anyone down on the cages. Instead,
empty cages continued to be lowered into the pitch
black, but “no hand was laid upon them.”

About 9 a.m., with nearly 40 miners still missing,
the smoke began to clear at the Kentuck allowing
Thomas Smith and another miner to descend to the
700-foot level, where they recovered the bodies of
Anthony Toy and Patrick E. Quinn. At about the
same time, two of three Bickle brothers employed in
the Gold Hill mines, Richard and George, were
attempting to escape the fire’s fury on one of the lowered
cages at the Crown Point, when Richard was
overcome by the gases and sank down in the cage. As
the cage ascended, “his head was caught between the
cage and the timbers and nearly torn off.”9 Richard
died as a result. So did his brother, who, despite making
it safely to the surface, collapsed from the gases
and passed away a day later. The third brother, John,
also lost his life in the blaze.

With rescue hopes still not entirely dimmed, at
about 11 a.m., a cage was sent down to the 1,000-
foot level of the Crown Point, where it was known
that a number of men were huddled below the fire
near a fresh air blower. On board was a lighted lantern,
a small box of candles, and a dispatch from
mine superintendent Jones reading:

We are fast subduing and doing the fire. It is
death to attempt to come up from where you are.
We will get to you soon. The gas in the shaft is
terrible, and produces sure and speedy death.
Write a word to us, and send it up on the cage,
and let us know how you are.

No answer came back. Ventilators, which
poured fresh air down to the miners, were kept
open, but by noon, with 28 miners still missing
and no one boarding the empty cages as they journeyed
eerily up and down the shafts, there was little
doubt as to the fate of these miners.

“No person who stood at the mouth of either of
these shafts but experienced the choking effect of
the smoke and gases issuing from below, or could
for a moment entertain the slightest hope that any
one of those in the mine could be alive, yet wives
and relatives would still hope against everything,
and in every direction almost superhuman exertions
were made to extinguish the fire,” the Territorial
Enterprise tragically recorded.

The fire could have been squelched by sealing the
openings to the various shafts and forcing steam
down into the mines, but to do so would have been
to admit that all hope was lost. While the smoke and
gases still bellowed from the other mines, at the Yellow
Jacket, firemen were able to run a water hose
down to the 800-foot level and make slow advances.
In places where the timbers looked insecure, the
water would be turned off, while miners moved forward
to shore up the walls. The battle with the fire
could then continue. In many places, even after the
timbers had been extinguished, it was necessary to
fall back. The rock walls being superheated, they
had to first be cooled by a stream of water. In other
places, boiling water covered the tunnel floors to
two to three inches in depth.

John Percival Jones, a hero of the Gold Hill fire. Jones was later a
Nevada State Senator. He is known to coin collectors for the proposal
that led to the issuance of the U.S. 20-cent piece, minted from 1875-
1878.

Firemen battled the blaze late into the evening.
At about 9 p.m., when the fire began to rise again,
another water hose was lowered into the mine, to
the 700-foot level. By midnight the firefighters
had made enough headway that workmen were
able to retrieve 11 bodies and locate nine others at
the 800-foot level. The sickening task of recovering
the dead continued through the early morning
hours. Some were retrieved from the bottom of the
Crown Point shaft where they had fallen. Others,
likely those with whom Superintendent Jones had
tried to communicate, were discovered at the
1,000-foot level, “lying in all sorts of despairing
positions, just as they sunk down…under the
effects of the foul smoke strongly charged with the
pungent and deadly carbonic acid gas.”

By Thursday afternoon, the number of bodies
recovered had risen to 23. Some of these miners
worked in the Kentuck and Yellow Jacket, but had
apparently sought exit through a drift connecting
to the Crown Point, where they were caught near
the shaft by an explosion “so great as to throw
quite a body of chips, dirt and refuse in the
shaft.”13 Another of the dead was found between
the 800- and 900-foot levels of the Crown Point,
still clinging tightly to the ladder on which he had
desperately sought escape.

By late Friday morning, two full days after its
discovery, the fire was still raging. Further recoveries
being impossible, the decision was made to
seal up the shafts of the Gold Hill mines involved.
Planks, wet blankets, and moist earth were used to
plug the entrances to the mines. An hour later, with
the aid of heavy iron piping run from boilers,
steam was sent down through the large pipe of the
blower to the 800- and 900-foot levels where it
would travel through other parts of the mines to
help suffocate the fire. But the fire proved more
stubborn than most thought, and the mines
remained sealed for days to come. Many months
later, it continued to smolder.

Despite initial reports that third-shift miners had
smelled smoke as early as 3 a.m. on the morning
of the fire, others came to believe that the deadly
blaze did not start until an hour before the first
shift came on duty, at the time when only car men
remained in the mine. These miners theorized that
the fire originated on the 800-foot level of the Yellow
Jacket mine, at a point 300 feet to the south of
the main shaft, where a winze shaft connected to
the 900-foot level. A lit candle in a nearby wooden
candle box was thought to be the most likely culprit.
Slightly more than one month earlier, on
March 6, 1869, the candle box at the same location
caught on fire. The fire quickly spread, but was
discovered in time and successfully suffocated
with nearby old coats and clothes.

On April 7, 1869, the same winze had last been
used by a car man about an hour before the fire’s
discovery. The miners believed that the fire started
when the lit candle tumbled in the box. The fire
then spread, burning the timbers in the winze shaft
to such an extent that they caved-in, filling the
shaft with debris. Trapped gases within the shaft
then caused an explosion, spreading the fire.

The Yellow Jacket, source of the original fire,
was reopened with “great volumes of gaseous
smoke” pouring out on April 17. Three more
bodies having been raised to the surface during a
prior opening of the mines, the number of dead
stood at 33, with likely five more bodies to be
recovered. The cage being lowered, it was found,
however, that the timbers had swollen so badly that
they had to be carefully trimmed before it could
pass. Despite optimistic reports from the mine
owners that the mines would resume operations
soon, shoring up the caved walls and trimming
away burnt timbers proved dangerous and time
consuming. Another workman lost his life in the
process. It would be weeks, not days, before the
mines were ready to be worked.

The effect of the devastating fire was lost on
California stock speculators, some of whom, by
virtue of distance and a starkly coldhearted nature,
cared more about how their Comstock shares were
doing than the fate of the miners. In San Francisco,
a malicious rumor was spread that the fire had
been purposely set to bear the stock market, so
those who started the blaze could benefit from the
lowered stock prices. Less than a week after the
fire, the Territorial Enterprise reprinted a piece
from the Gold Hill News, relating these charges:

H.C. Bennett, a gentleman connected publicly
and privately with the press in San Francisco, has
sent us a letter stating that there were rumors on
the streets of that city regarding the origin of the
fire in our mines last Wednesday, to the effect that
the conflagration was intentionally started by persons
interested in the mines, expecting to “bear”
the stock of the mines. Such rumors sound so
infernally and so damnably malicious—and bearing
upon their face the stamp and conception of
some incendiary scoundrels—that it hardly seems
necessary to notice them. But lest that silence on
our part—as we live near, and were among the
earliest at the mines when the fire was discovered,
and know what we state—and as we have been
advised of the street reports in San Francisco—
might be misconstrued, we take the liberty [to]
state that there is not the least ground for supposing
that the fire was anything but accidental, or
culpable carelessness on the part of one of the
workmen, who himself narrowly escaped from a
horrid death. To attribute sinister motives to General
Winters, the Superintendent of the Yellow
Jacket, to Governor Jones, of the Crown Point and
Kentuck, or to any of the hard-working and honest
foremen under them, or even to any of the
miners, is doing an act of such gross injustice,
that the parties originating and circulating such
reports had better not come to Gold Hill and
repeat them. Our brawny-armed miners who
escaped from the dread calamity would not rest
easy under such imputations—and woe to the
foul-mouthed villains who had the temerity to
whisper such reports in this community. Mr. Bennett
states that the reports have it that cans of benzine,
shavings, and other inflammable materials
were used to start the conflagration. Horrible and
villainous thought!

On July 19, 1869, the annual meeting of stockholders
of the Yellow Jacket Silver Mining Company
was held at the company’s office in Gold Hill
for the election of officers. Named trustees were
J.D. Winters, William Sharon, D. Driscoll, T.G.
Taylor and T.B. Storer. The trustees in turn elected
Winters president and superintendent, Taylor vice
president, F.E. Osbiston secretary, and the Bank of
California treasurer. The retiring board levied a
$10-per-share assessment against stockholders,
payable to the secretary at Gold Hill or to William
C. Ralston at the Bank of California.

“But for the great fire in the mines it would not
have been necessary to levy this assessment. It will
probably be the last that stockholders will be
called upon to pay in some time,” the Territorial
Enterprise’s reporter assured. Nevertheless, the
town was shaken. Something needed to be done to
make the mines safe. Adolph Sutro, who had been
tirelessly searching for support for his plan to ram
a tunnel through Mount Davidson, draining and
venting the Comstock, found the disaster the perfect
opportunity to turn public sentiment toward
his ambitious, costly and controversial plan.

Gold Hill shortly before the devastating fire. King Survey photograph (circa 1867-1868). Courtesy of the Still Pictures Branch, National Archives, College Park, Md.